tl,dr

It's 1982, and you're playing an arcade game. Of course it has a space theme -- it's 1982. Your mission: Destroy everything you can.

ORIGINAL GAME DESCRIPTION

The ambush was devastating.

The entire Xenogryph starforce was waiting to cut your star fleet to ribbons. Over 100 star cruisers have been destroyed through this treachery and it is a sheer miracle that you have survived.

Now, facing the overwhelming odds, you assess the situation.

You and your crew must destroy four heavily defended space forts and all of the trackers, fighters and launches that the Xenogryphs can hurl at you, and you must react instantly, fearlessly, and correctly. There is no room for error. There is no one that can stop the Xenogryphs but you.

Survivor^tm pits you and your crew (1 to 4 players) against incalculatable odds. You can fly your Starwedge Cruiser solo, with one or two gunners, and/or a propulsion engineer, across a scrolling galaxy of danger and excitement.

Luck has served you thus far trooper, but only your skill can make you the Survivor.^tm

CONTROLS

Arrow keys drive the ship. SHIFT or CTRL can be used to fire (for the fastest firing rate, hold the key down.) Use the SPACE BAR to fire "smartbombs", which will kill any bad guys that happen to be chasing you.

GAMEPAD SUPPORT

Most modern gamepads with a "standard" layout (PlayStation, 8bitDo and the like) should work as expected. The D-pad or first analog joystick can be used to fly. A second analog joystick control can be used to aim the turret, so you can fly and aim your turret independently of one another. In the original game, a second player would use their joystick to aim and fire.

HOW TO PLAY

The goal: Destroy the bases by shooting out the turrets attached to them. When all turrets are dead on a base, it will explode. When all bases are dead, you will pass the level.

Avoid crashing into "spaceballs" (green asteroid slimeball-like things), and shoot or steer clear of "bad guys" that will occasionally appear and chase you. As you destroy each, the speed of the game will increase slightly.

ABOUT

SURVIVOR was originally written for the Atari 2600 home arcade game system in 1982, and was ported in 1983 to the popular Commodore 64 computer system. This is a browser-based remake, written in 2012 and last updated in 2026, that is a tribute to the spirit of the Commodore 64 version. It is a browser-based prototype demonstrating (and admittedly, ironically,) how HTML + CSS + JavaScript can be used to emulate games designed for hardware that existed thirty years prior.

*** LEVEL PASSED ***

This is the part where the game would say "level 2" and you would then get to replay the same scene, but with everything sped up -- since it was 1982, this was a way to make games increasingly difficult at the time.

Your mission, should you accept it: Repeat the level you just passed, but with everything moving around you 25 percent faster.

Thanks for playing!